Janet L.'s blog

Summertime is a wonderful opportunity for children and parents to build special memories and discover hours of simple fun. Kids can create a masterpiece painting with milk-based paint or use a mixture of shaving cream and glue to make a puff paint mural. (Recipe below) Write secret codes to one another with invisible ink and then hide them around the house or in the yard. Combine imagination, pasta plus glue and you can design a “Pasta Creation” with different shapes of pasta, or go for a nature walk and build a picture from whatever treasures you collect. Abundant ideas can be found in the many books we have here at The Monroe County Public Library Children’s Department. A few titles you might consider are:

So B. It is a very special novel by Sarah Weeks. Heidi, a twelve year old girl lives in Reno, Nevada with her mentally disabled mother and a quirky neighbor. Homeschooled by her neighbor, Bernadette, Heidi lives a very unconventional life. Her mother has a vocabulary of only 23 words, Bernadette is afraid to leave her apartment, and Heidi's one friend, Zander, is overweight, loves junk food, and lives in a world of made up stories.

The mysteries of how Heidi and her mother arrived at the apartment, who pays for their apartment, and what her mother's strange word "soof" means, haunt the reader as well as Heidi. When Heidi finds a roll of film and has the photos developed they reveal her mother at a Christmas party held at Hilltop Home in Liberty, New York. Heidi simply cannot rest until she pieces together Mama's past. She decides she must travel there alone in order to discover who her mother is, and, in the journey she discovers a great deal about herself. This book is about identity, asking questions, and living both with and without the answers. A memorable and unusual story, So B. It would be great for ages 9 and up.